American Enterprise Institute

Beyond the political and moral stakes, the war in Ukraine will also decide who controls the $26 trillion in strategic natural resources that make Ukraine one of the world’s mineral superpowers. AEI Senior Fellow Marc A. Thiessen explains why President-elect Donald Trump cannot allow Vladimir Putin to claim this bounty.

We're #hiring a new Assistant, Academic Programs in Washington, District of Columbia. Apply today or share this post with your network.

In today’s newsletter, we examine the growing achievement gap in US schools, the political divide on infidelity, and Americans’ perceptions of the Democratic Party.

My WSJ OpEd: Mining the tech frontier exposes America’s talent to ideas that motivate risk-taking by increasing expected after-tax payoffs and have large compounding effects laughably overlooked by tax elasticity studies https://lnkd.in/ehybfpjz Economists never cite two of the most important facts about the U.S. economy: with half the share of high test scores as Northern Europe, over the last 50 years America has created nearly 250 $10 billion-plus companies worth nearly $30 trillion in total compared to only 14 European companies worth about $400 billion—an astonishing 70-times difference in productivity. Mining the technological frontier exposes America’s talent to valuable ideas that greatly increase expected after-tax returns to risk-taking. Higher payoffs have had enormous compounding effects on the success of America relative to Europe and Japan that would take Europe decades of successful risk-taking to reproduce. We are racing against the rest of the world to build successful cutting-edge companies in America rather than elsewhere and are dependent on the tail of the distribution to drive up mediocre venture capital returns. Tax elasticity studies, which can only measure short-term effects, laughably overlook these enormous long-term consequences.

"The Economy Is Finally Stable. Is That About to Change?" by Ben Casselman: https://lnkd.in/e3vbmTmm

The trend is undeniable: Americans are fleeing progressive states for conservative ones, and they are bringing their incomes with them. If blue state governors want to reverse this mass out migration, time is of the essence. Americans Are Fleeing Progressive Governors Vowing #Resistance —to Red States by Edward Pinto 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eHz6nZRG

In his first term, Donald Trump launched the United States’ tech competition with China through tariffs, subsidies, and export controls, especially on microchips, which continued during the Biden administration. Writing for the Financial Times, author of Chip War and AEI Nonresident Senior Fellow Chris Miller assesses how the second Trump administration might reset or intensify these policies.

For those of us who are troubled by populism, the upside of this recent history is that it confirms the temporary nature of the phenomenon. If US workers can experience, say, four or five years of solid real wage growth, populist sentiment should wane again, like it did before the pandemic. There is a crucial lesson for Republicans. Voters may be in the mood for a president who will experiment with trade wars and draconian immigration measures, but that could change faster than many think. If Republicans want to win again in 2028, they will need to embrace policies that make peoples’ lives better over the next four years. Populist policies do not work. Smart Republicans with an eye toward lasting political success will seek policies that do. My latest Project Syndicate column. https://lnkd.in/dYhGTjcT 

To fight growing degree inflation and graduate underemployment, policymakers and employers must help create noncollege pathways to success, argues Preston Cooper in Forbes.

In today’s DataPoints, we examine the exodus from blue to red states, 5 representatives who outran President-elect Donald Trump in close districts, and the broad consensus around high-skilled immigration.